Kenya Power to Lease out Land, Open up Garage to Recover Revenue

Kenya Power and Lighting Company (KPLC) has announced its plans to lease out idle pieces of land and open up a public garage.

KPLC announced the new move as a bid to boost its profitability after it recorded a huge loss in revenue in the 2019 financial year.

Kenya Power’s Managing Director Bernard Ngugi announced that the new plan is a potential business idea owing to the idle pieces of land the company has and many vehicles on the roads.

“We have a transport section and we want to open that as a public garage since it is idle at the moment. We also want to lease out idle land. The garage sits on a huge land and we will liaise with insurers to allow us to repair vehicles. Going by the growing numbers of vehicles on roads, it is a potential business.”

According to Mr. Ngugi, the garage business would be handled by Kenya Power International, which is its subsidiary which was launched in 2016.it was launched to diversify the company’s sources of revenue.

KPLC says it owns six idle pieces of land lying somewhere in Nairobi, Mombasa, Nyeri, two in Nakuru and two in Eldoret.

The company also seeks to expand its fibre business which was launched in 2010.

“The fibre business gives an average of Sh500 million and we want to incrementally improve on this investment to increase leasing to the telcos. We still believe it is a lucrative business and we have started injecting in new capital,” said the company’s MD.

The new announcement comes at a time when the power company is struggling to recover from its recent revenue loss where it posted a 92 percent drop in 2019.

The company’s net earnings for the year stood at 334 million shillings, a drop from 4,968 million shillings recorded in 2018.

KPLC, however, recorded an increase in electricity sales earnings revenue from electricity sales grew by 16,994 million shillings from 95,435 million shillings the previous year to 112,429 million shillings.

Last week, the company fired 110 employees who were involved in illegal connections in an attempt to bring back the operations of the company to its feet and at the same time improve customer services.

KPLC said that it loses at least 20 percent in revenues from fraud and illegal connections that are rampant in most urban centers, especially Nairobi.